Castle of the Damned | ✔

Chapter 12: The Journal

As Dess slowly tiptoed up the stairs, doing her very best not to make a sound, she couldn't help but notice how successful Thomas Lacroix's renovations had been.

She remembered the ruins of the Chatêau de Saint Vincent as they used to be: the place had reeked of mould back when she was a child, of moss and must and something old and mysterious. She could handle it better now, but the memory still made her gag. The castle hadn't been much more than old stone and empty halls back then, with rotting old floorboards in the main keep and stairs she always feared would collapse if she put her weight on them.

She'd played in the castle in those days, in the keep and on the broken stones of ancient walls still left outside. She'd fallen one day, scraped her knee so bad it had looked like she'd rubbed tomato sauce all over her lower leg. Metallic-scented tomato sauce. But it had been okay in the end, because her next-door neighbour had given her a glass of lemonade and yellow plasters to put on the cuts, and he'd let her pet his young black cat, which was nice even though black cats meant bad luck.

Dess' hand rested on the wall when she reached the first floor; chilly stone, its rough texture not as unpleasant against her skin as she'd expected. Before her, a long, dark hallway stretched on, never-ending. A heavy silence hung within it, weighing down on her more than a thousand voices could. There didn't seem to be anything resembling a light switch around and already she could hardly make out the wooden doors leading to various rooms or even where to place her own two feet.

She had to be careful here. Thomas Lacroix currently didn't reside in his castle alone. He had his friend, too, Erin Halloran, the strange girl Dess had met earlier that day. An interesting character, crashing into a dumpster near the bakery, asking questions about the castle as if her life depended on it, never appearing comfortable or at peace.

And that hadn't made sense to Dess, not at all. Because wasn't Erin's stay at Lacroix's castle meant to be a vacation of sorts? And weren't vacations supposed to be relaxing? Dess thought Erin hadn't properly relaxed in a long time and that she wouldn't start doing so anytime soon, either.

But whether Erin relaxed or not, one of the rooms here functioned as her bedroom, and stepping into her sleeping space and waking her accidentally was the last thing Dess wanted to do. If Erin woke, she'd be all sleep-drunk and out of it, but Dess foresaw it would still be troublesome, if not impossible, to convince her Dess was actually allowed to be here in the castle in the middle of the night with Lacroix asleep at his dinner table.

Yeah. Dess had to avoid that room at all costs.

She needed Lacroix's bedroom. But which room belonged to him? It wasn't like the man had marked his territory like a dog and Dess couldn't find any hints as to where she had to go conveniently strewn about. She'd have to trust her intuition.

Her intuition… and her memories.

She'd spied on Lacroix in silence often enough to have an idea of his bedroom's location. She envisioned the backside of the keep in vivid detail, sifting through memories made while on amateur stalker duty. The process oddly resembled binge-watching her favourite show on Netflix: she raced through her recollections, pausing episodes in her mind occasionally, skipping insignificant parts and slowing down when needed. If she'd had subtitles in her mind, the comparison would truly be flawless.

After half a minute of pondering, she finally remembered Thomas Lacroix had once been standing in front of the third window as seen from left to right, wearing a shirt old and faded enough to be nightwear.

Perfect.

Holding her breath, Dess counted doors, sparks of excitement prickling beneath her skin. She didn't dare make a noise so close to her goal. When she reached the plain, wooden door, she put her hand on the knob, praying she wouldn't have to waste time picking a lock.